The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, to uphold state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams. The conservative supermajority held that the laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, and that they also do not violate Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bars sex discrimination in education. Trans youth athletes across the country say they will keep competing anyway.
The ruling came in two consolidated cases, West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, brought by two transgender athletes who had been blocked from competing on teams that match their gender identity. It is the latest in a string of losses for transgender plaintiffs at the court, and it draws a sharp line under a six-year campaign to keep trans girls out of girls’ sports in more than half of US states. “We’re not backing down,” said Nereyda Hernandez, a California trans rights advocate whose 17-year-old daughter became one of the most well-known trans athletes in the country when Donald Trump began targeting her on social media last year. The court ruled that West Virginia and Idaho could keep their bans, but the decision did not create a national ban.
How the Court Ruled 6-3
The decision split cleanly along ideological lines on the constitutional question and unanimously on the statutory one. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four other conservative members, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, filed partial dissents. Both consolidated cases were argued together on January 13, 2026.
On the constitutional Equal Protection claim, the majority held that the states had important interests in competitive fairness and safety, and that limiting girls’ and women’s teams to athletes assigned female at birth was substantially related to those interests. On the Title IX claim, Kavanaugh wrote that the law’s implementing regulations “expressly permit schools to maintain separate teams for ‘members of each sex.'” He added that “an enormous practical and administrability problem would arise if courts suddenly had to make such individualized exemptions” for transgender athletes who had taken puberty blockers or hormone therapy. The Constitution and Title IX, he concluded, do not “require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America.” He also expressed sympathy, writing that transgender athletes’ “desire to compete warrants respect.”
Sotomayor agreed that the laws did not violate Title IX, but would have sent the case back to the lower courts for more fact-finding on whether transgender athletes who had not undergone testosterone puberty actually had a competitive advantage. She wrote that the majority “inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions.” Justices Kagan and Jackson joined her dissent.
The Court’s full opinion in West Virginia v. B.P.J. runs to dozens of pages and lays out the reasoning that other federal courts will now apply when similar cases reach them. It also signals how the justices are likely to read future challenges to sex-based classifications outside of sports.
The Two Cases the Justices Decided
Idaho became the first state to ban transgender women and girls from women’s sports teams when it passed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020. West Virginia followed a year later with the Save Women’s Sports Act, which defines gender “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” and bars trans girls from competing on girls’ teams in middle school, high school, and college. Both laws were challenged by transgender athletes who had been trying to play on the teams that matched their gender identity.
The Idaho case, Little v. Hecox, was brought by Lindsay Hecox, who tried out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State without success and has since competed in running and club soccer. The West Virginia case, West Virginia v. B.P.J., was brought on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old rising high school junior who has competed in girls’ cross-country, shot put, and discus. Both plaintiffs have used hormone therapy to align their bodies with their gender identity.
The two cases were consolidated for oral argument on January 13, 2026, and decided together on June 30, 2026.
| Case | State | Plaintiff | Year law passed | Treatment | Sport |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Little v. Hecox | Idaho | Lindsay Hecox, 25-year-old college student | 2020 | Testosterone suppression and estrogen | Track, cross-country, running, club soccer |
| West Virginia v. B.P.J. | West Virginia | Becky Pepper-Jackson, 16-year-old rising high school junior | 2021 | Puberty-blocking medication and estrogen | Girls’ cross-country, shot put, discus |
Trans Athletes Vow to Keep Playing
AB Hernandez spent her senior year at Jurupa Valley High School in Riverside County as one of the most visible transgender athletes in the country. The president singled her out in a social media post last year, claiming he was “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” her to compete and writing that her participation was “TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN.” She went on to win the California state high jump and triple jump titles in May.
In an interview with the Guardian, AB said the experience had taught her to brush off her detractors. Her reaction became one of the most quoted lines from the past year of public fights over trans athletes in sports.
I defied the president, in a way. I was like, oh my God, I did do something.
That is how AB Hernandez, the 17-year-old track-and-field athlete from Jurupa Valley, California, put it to the Guardian after her state championship wins. Her mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said the family would not be moved by the Supreme Court’s ruling or by any political pressure surrounding her daughter’s career. “I’ve always said, you’re not going to intimidate me or bully my kid out of sports,” Nereyda said. AB added: “If I had been forced to join the boys’ team, it would just be so uncomfortable for all of us. We’re just high school girls trying to have fun and play a sport we all love.”
Lina Haaga, a 15-year-old track athlete in Pasadena who transitioned at age four and has also played basketball, tennis, water polo, and lacrosse, said she feared the ruling could “give up the rights of trans people in other areas.” Lily Norcross, a 17-year-old track athlete from California’s Central Coast, said she worried about ripple effects beyond athletics, warning that “I will not back down from this fight.” Lina Haaga’s own essay describing the attacks she has faced appeared in the Guardian in the weeks before the decision.
America’s 27-to-20 Sports Patchwork
The ruling lands on top of a state-by-state patchwork that has hardened sharply over the last six years. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 27 states have banned transgender youth from playing school sports since 2020, and more than 20 states have maintained pro-LGBTQ+ policies that allow trans students to compete on teams matching their gender.
The ACLU warned that the bans can encourage invasive sex-testing procedures that put all female athletes at risk, not just transgender ones. In Florida, a 15-year-old junior varsity volleyball player became the subject of a police investigation after an anonymous accusation, and local officials drafted a 500-page report examining her medical history, body weight, and anatomy. In Utah, a teenage basketball player was accused of being transgender by a member of the state board of education, prompting threats of violence against her and her family. A transgender teenager in Maine faced a similar attack from a state senator. And in Arizona, a cisgender male student was prohibited from competing on the boys’ team at his high school because a clerical error had listed him as female on his original birth certificate.
The actual number of transgender athletes affected by the bans is tiny in sports terms. The NCAA president said in 2024 that there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in college sports, and lawmakers have struggled over the years to identify a single out transgender K-12 athlete in many of their states. But the broader population affected is far larger: advocates note that there are 110,000 trans youth ages 13 to 17 living in states with sports bans.
- 6-3 decision along ideological lines
- 27 states with sports bans targeting trans youth
- More than 20 states with pro-LGBTQ+ policies
- 110,000 trans youth ages 13 to 17 in ban states
- Fewer than 10 trans college athletes (per NCAA)
Reactions Split the Country Within Hours
The reactions split along partisan lines almost immediately. The president posted on Truth Social that the decision was a “BIG WIN,” writing: “The United States Supreme Court just RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, said the state had “defended a simple principle most Americans instinctively understand: that women’s sports exist to provide women and girls a fair opportunity to compete and succeed.” West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey, whose office argued the case before the justices in January, called the ruling a “monumental victory.”
Democratic elected officials pointed in the opposite direction. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz posted on X: “As the Supreme Court says states can be cruel to trans kids, my message is clear: Here in Minnesota, we stand with and value our trans neighbors and youth.” Governor Tim Walz’s statement that Minnesota stands with trans youth spread rapidly across the platform.
The plaintiffs’ counsel response from the ACLU and Lambda Legal came quickly. Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project, called the ruling a “heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them who’ve asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers.” Sasha Buchert, senior attorney and director of Lambda Legal’s Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project, said it was “deeply harmful for transgender women and girls who only asked for the ability to participate in sports with their peers.”
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, said the decision “creates an unnecessarily unfair playing field.” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s response to the ruling made clear that his state would not follow the West Virginia and Idaho model.
The Reach Beyond the Playing Field
Kavanaugh’s opinion drew a sharp line between Title IX and Title VII, the federal employment discrimination law that the court held in 2020 protects transgender workers. Because the “two factual contexts are vastly different,” he wrote, the constitutional analysis for sports teams does not follow the workplace. The Wall Street Journal editorial board read the opinion as limiting the reach of that 2020 precedent, and warned that the same logic could complicate future cases over “other sex-segregated spaces like locker rooms or bathrooms.” The ruling comes in a term that has already produced losses for transgender plaintiffs on several other fronts: last year the court upheld state laws banning gender transition treatments for transgender youth, allowed Trump administration policies that bar transgender people from the military, and permitted the State Department to stop recognizing gender identity on passports.
This year the justices also ruled for parents who objected to California policies aimed at protecting transgender students. Trump issued an executive order early in his second term titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and his administration has sued California over its inclusive athletics policies. The legal outlook for transgender athletes in the 27 ban states is now narrow, though the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the plaintiffs say they will continue to litigate in the more than 20 states where trans students still compete on teams matching their gender identity. Lambda Legal’s Buchert said her organization “will not be deterred and will continue to fight back to secure the equal participation that all youth, including transgender youth, deserve.” How these cases reached the justices this term shows the long legal road that led from the Idaho and West Virginia statutes to the courtroom in Washington.
